Flemish particle physicist wins Nobel Prize in Physics (VIDEO)

Francis Halzen has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his pioneering research into neutrinos, also known as ‘ghost particles from the universe’. Neutrinos are high-energy, elementary particles that have almost no mass and pass right through everything, including our bodies.

Neutrinos are of great interest in helping us understand the universe, including galaxies and black holes.

Watch how the prize announcement was made in Stockholm

Who is Francis Halzen?

Francis Halzen was born on 23 March 1944 in Tienen, Flemish Brabant. He studied physics at KU Leuven/UC Louvain and between 1969 and 1971 worked as a scientist at CERN, the European research centre known for its large particle accelerator.

Since 1972, Halzen has been a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States.

Francis Halzen came up with the idea of building a large detector at the South Pole to detect neutrinos, ‘ghost particles from the universe’. He led the project during its construction and scientific development. The observatory was built between 2005 and 2010.

What did Francis Halzen discover?

Francis Halzen discovered that ice at the South Pole can be used to detect neutrinos. Neutrinos float everywhere throughout the universe, but because they interact with almost nothing, they are almost impossible to detect.

However, when a neutrino collides with an ice particle, it does produce a faint flash of blue light. Halzen therefore decided that a giant detector needed to be built in Antarctica to detect these flashes of light.

“Francis Halzen’s discovery and scientific leadership have been of fundamental importance to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, a cubic kilometre of ice equipped with light sensors,” says the Nobel Committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

“Using IceCube, researchers can detect neutrinos originating from extremely high-energy processes in the distant universe.”